GR12 - AWM vs 30 civs, Pangea

[vmxa]

I was guessing the dark blues was the remains of the Babs. I think I listed bab kills that may have been Germany as I sometimes got the blues crossed.

Anyway even logging as I went, you miss something.

NP you probably are right about the flips, just more paranoia on my part.

I missed Arabia bowing out, I guess. Don't forget that Russia was killed by someone back a bit.

Maybe Az will find Babs as they were at war.

 

[Greebley]

I got it.

5,7, 10 - all those numbers of turns are fine. I tend not to like enforcing a single number.

 

[Greebley]

I played 4 turns so far.

We met 3 more civs. The Korean initial rush is looking nasty. Things may be a bit rough in the near future.

Printing press is making its rounds and is definitely adding a level of challenge to the game.

 

[vmxa]

Yes there were 10 civ that contacts could have been gotten, so it is just of matter of them buying them from each other and giving us up.

 

[Greebley]

Preturn: Defend Babylon better. There are MDI at the gates. Minor tweaks.

IBT: Nippur is attacked by an Aztec spear and is captured. It was defended by an injured MDI.

1465 AD: Still dealing with the mad rush of units. No advancing at the moment.
Get a leader which I will save for an army. There is land to build new towns.

IBT: Declare war with the Celts. Pike on mountain holds off a Longbow and 2 MDI.

1470 AD: Declare war with Egypt and the Mongols.
Build 3 towns to get another Army.
Get Chemistry Science to 90% (lux at 10%) to get Metallurgy and Mil Trad as fast as possible. I think we will want to connect the Saltpeter when we get Metallurgy for the Cannons.

On the war front, I still have an annoying stack of 8 MDI well within our territory, but otherwise we have cleared out units in our lands.

IBT: Koreans show up.

1475 AD: Attacked and Auto-razed Sapporo, a new Japanese town.

IBT: Lots of Koreans.

1480 AD: Get ready to attack Korean hordes.

I was playing around with the settings - this seemed a good way to look for enemy units - ctrl-shift-n with only borders and units displayed. Note you can tell where the towns are because the team disc isn't displayed.

IBT: Suprisingly Korea attacks our heavily guarded town when it has a path to easier cities. The battle weakens us so that the Romans also attack. It is really close with us losing a knight. All 3 Armies survive.

1485 AD: This time I encourage the Koreans to go for the town which I defend with even more armies.

IBT: Koreans attack. Unfortunately, they get lucky and two Armies are lost. The other three survive. The Korean Horde have very few offensive units left. I am not worried about defending ourselves on that front any longer. Didn't intend to have it cost us Armies though. We need more leaders...

1490 AD: We get two! leaders this turn. Well if you can't be good you can always be lucky. Up to Max leaders again. arty:
Things look under control at the end of this turn. The Iroquois are coming in dribs and drabs, the Dutch didn't have strong units (only a few swiss pike), and the Koreans broke their back on the walls of South Fort.

IBT: Oop Here comes the main Iroquois fast unit attack force. About 17 knights are in view. I expect we will have a slow unit wave as well.

1495 AD: Bombard the Iroquois and kill a few with an Army. They will likely retreat so we can handle them in pieces.

1500 AD: Kill More iroquois. Build a town to the East to slow the Iroquois advance slightly. There is open road leading into our lands.

Notes:
I did not mention the town building I did, but I basically filled the razed areas on the map. I believe initially we had 64 cities - we now have 76 so 12 more cities.

At 76 cities we can use our next leader for an army (we have 18 with a max of 19).

So far there are 3 civs to the West and the rest are all East. I am guessing the lands to the West are much smaller. However, since we have such a good choke point there, I think we should expand East.

We probably should be building more settlers. Next player may want to set some towns on that.

We need more town defense especially in the south. Build some pike.

We have 12 native workers that can be merged.

It might be nice to rush the Galley in Valley Mills to go for the Babylons.

All the Galleys near Yallbert have been sunk by a single galley (even with us fortified). I have not been able to get troops to Evora

Note I gave all the towns starting with the word New a name that was unique (so we have no towns that start with the word New (just because)).

I have found it useful to know the order of the AI turns. You can determine who is going to block whom in some cases.

Here is the order for anyone who also finds this useful. Note that it lists only civs for which I have seen a unit. We have more civs than this on the diplo screen. Blue city names are the three western civs. These tend to crowd one another and sometimes retreat. There are a number of retreated Romans for example.

Of these civs, I only saw boats/boat landings from England and Babylon - they may be on a different land mass.

German
Babylon
Sumeria
Aztec
Korea
Portugal
Netherlands
Carthage
England
Rome
Iroquois

Pictures of the East and West fronts.

 

[Greebley]

Uploads seems to be down. Anyone know another way to upload and post a link to the save?

Roster:
Greebley - Just Played
ThERat - Up
Northern Pike - On Deck
Beorn-eL-Feared
markh
Vxma

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

So far there are 3 civs to the West and the rest are all East. I am guessing the lands to the West are much smaller. However, since we have such a good choke point there, I think we should expand East.

Good point on the choke and expansion. The most advanced civs we've seen were from the west, however: Rome, Korea, initially the Babs (oops Sumeria was from the east), so my guess is that either it's good land they got or they were well surrounded. We should check the contacts info, since this is a full intel game, and see wether or not Korea and Rome have friends over there.

But one way or the other, however many civs there are out there, if we raze Nippur and rush culture to ring 3 in the 2 forts, we're good for an everlasting defensive killzone right there. There's a LOT of room to expand east and it is in no way tying our hands behind our backs to ignore westwards expansion. Totally agreed.

Btw, is the swords army dead yet?

X-post: I do it from my university server when that happens but it's private/passworded, sorry

 

[vmxa]

I am surprised to see no cavs show up so far. You can determine the order of the civs by looking at the hist graph. They go from the far right to the left, so it is easy to see.

Not much luck on the galles, I lost both as well. Wonder how long before we see some frigates?

 

[ThERat]

Greebley, maybe you can pm me the save? Or email to me, I sent you a pm with my email address...

 

[vmxa]

I see a few others are having problems with the upload. Don't know if it is full or what. Anyway I would love to see the save, so if either Greebly or ThERat would be be willing to forward it:

Edit to remove address, ftp is ok now.

 

[Greebley]

I played Dreamfall - The Longest Journey way too late last night and didn't get a chance to post (I also finished it - the story was quite good and wouldn't let me go to bed ) I also had to rush to work and did not get a chance to post.

So I hope to have the save tonight. Apologies for the delay but it is all April's and Zoe's fault.

 

[ThERat]

it's ok since I didn't have time to play yesterday anyway...tonight between the soccer games will be a good time. By the way, how is that game? last time I heard only good things about the longest journey

 

[Greebley]

I thought it good. Puzzles were sometimes a bit simple, mostly because they tried to keep them realistic. The story was extremely compelling.

As for the end... well lets just say they made it abundantly clear that there would have to be a sequel or their fans would lynch them. Oy!

ThERat,
I tried to mail the save to you. Tell me if you get it or not.

 

[Greebley]

Wrong thread

 

[ThERat]

thanks Greebley. I got it via email. I will try and upload this save for the rest, once the server is up again

edit: well, seems it's working now

save

 

[vmxa]

Seems down now, so I will try tomorow, thanks for posting it.

 

[Northern Pike]

I'm doing a little holiday travelling, and I won't be able to play again until July 7. If the game hasn't advanced too much by that point perhaps we could make it a swap rather than a skip.

I was able to download the save a few minutes ago, although the process stalled for up to twenty seconds at a time.

 

[vmxa]

I would like to ask about the research. I was under the impression it was a good idea to to not go deficit by too much so cash would be available for upgrading to cavs.

So is that not the case and if not what is the reason? I ask not to suggest it is wrong, only to understand why. If I can get a good reason, then I would want to change my thinking.

Right now it is -129 for three turn. Dropping to -88 still gets three turns. Dropping to -26 goes 4 turns, but adding 5 or 6 beakerheads puts it back to 3 turns. That is 4 upgrades saved per turn.

Is it more imprtant to get to cavs at all cost, so we can start making them? Is it better to get there 1 or 2 turns later, but having 2000 or there about to immediately get 60 or so knights up as cavs?

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

I will be away and have to be skipped Jul 3-10, which probably means this turnset as well. *Might* lurk.

 

[Greebley]

I would like to ask about the research. I was under the impression it was a good idea to to not go deficit by too much so cash would be available for upgrading to cavs.

So is that not the case and if not what is the reason? I ask not to suggest it is wrong, only to understand why. If I can get a good reason, then I would want to change my thinking.

Right now it is -129 for three turn. Dropping to -88 still gets three turns. Dropping to -26 goes 4 turns, but adding 5 or 6 beakerheads puts it back to 3 turns. That is 4 upgrades saved per turn.

Is it more imprtant to get to cavs at all cost, so we can start making them? Is it better to get there 1 or 2 turns later, but having 2000 or there about to immediately get 60 or so knights up as cavs?

Hitting zero gold with research is best even if you plan to upgrade units.

The reason is that it is better to get the tech first and then start saving gold for upgrades.

I guess an example might show what I mean.

Say you need 2000 beakers for the Mil Trad and you are getting 200 gold and 200 science - it would take 10 turns to get Mil Trad after which you use all your gold to upgrade units.

Now if you spend 400 beakers instead, then you get Mil Trad in 5 turns and then run all gold. After 10 turns you spent 2000 beakers first in the first 5 and then have 5 turns of 400 gold. The amount of gold you have after 10 turns is the same (5 turns of 400 gold = 10 turns of 200 gold).

So the only difference with spending your money is that you got Mil Trad 5 turns earlier. You have the same money to spend. That means 5 turns of using your shields to also build cavalry.

I believe the above is also true if one has banks (which we don't) and cash is worth more. The reason is when you run science at 0 you get more cash and still catch up.

Thus if there is a key tech, it is optimal to have zero gold when you get that tech even if you plan to upgrade.

Edit: Obviously you do want to not overspend science. I always wait until the last 2 turns to adjust. Say max and 80% science both get the tech in 4 turns. If you keep it at max then there is a small chance that you will actually get it in 3 turns. That is because your economy is growing. Keeping 100% science until 2 turns maximizes this chance. You then adjust the science to remove overflow. Putting it at 80% at turn 4 doesn't really help lessen the overflow (It may have a slight advantage, but it is small), because if you were at max, you simply turn down science farther and end up with about the same overflow.

Thus when you have a lot of gold you want to run science at max until 2 turns and then turn down science.

I hope this makes sense...